


since i can remember i've been runnin' from you

by youmakemesoangry



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: M/M, Post-Oculus Leonard Snart, Slow Build, Speed Force
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-16 08:29:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17546174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youmakemesoangry/pseuds/youmakemesoangry
Summary: It starts off with a flash of blue.He sees a streak of blue out of the corner of his eye a week later when he’s running back to STARLabs. He trips and runs into the corner of a building when he automatically turns to look at what it was. He rights himself but by then, the blue is gone.





	since i can remember i've been runnin' from you

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this Camp NaNoWriMo....in July  
> whoops lol

It starts off with a flash of blue.

He wakes up soaked with sweat from a nightmare that he can barely remember. His heart is still pounding but he doesn’t feel the same panic that he had when he was asleep. Instead, he feels as though the nightmare can’t hurt him, that the nightmare isn’t as tangible as they normally are.

He presses his hand to his chest where there’s a soft pressure, like a hand holding him down and comforting him.

He breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth and blinks, eyes adjusting enough to see the barely visible shadows on his ceiling.

His phone rings and he jolts, throwing a hand out to grab it before the second ring could start and he’s already throwing his legs over the side of the bed as he answers the call from Joe to come in.

He checks the time on the stove as heads out of his apartment.

4:14 am.

He groans and walks out the door, the nightmare and the flash of blue forgotten before he even closes the door behind him.

 

❅

 

He sees a streak of blue out of the corner of his eye a week later when he’s running back to STARLabs. He trips and runs into the corner of a building when he automatically turns to look at what it was. He rights himself but by then, the blue is gone.

Cisco asks him if he’s okay, that his heart rate spiked and that he’d stopped running. He doesn’t answer for a moment, too busy trying to look around and find the source of the streak. He shakes his head to get himself to refocus on what he was doing and tells Cisco that he’s fine, that he just tripped.

He keeps focused on his peripheral vision as he runs again, but the flash doesn’t come back.

 

❅

 

He sees it again when he’s running on the treadmill a few days later and he goes flying into the wall behind him, thankfully padded now from all the times he’s hit it.

Cisco and Caitlin look at him through the glass window, looking amused and concerned respectively. He hops up and goes out to talk to them.

“You seem distracted. You okay?” He shrugs at Caitlin as his eyes flicker back to the treadmill room.

“Yeah? I think so. Just…a lot on my mind, I guess.” He puts on a smile that feels strained and Caitlin stares at him for a few seconds before giving him a more genuine smile back.

“Well, you know we’re always here if you want to talk to us.” He feels his shoulders relax and, when he looks, Cisco is giving him an encouraging smile.

“I know, guys. Thank you.” He opens his arms, sweaty t-shirt pulling along his wet skin. “Group hug?” He laughs when he steps forward and Caitlin squeals, rushing away and cursing at him as he chases her, Cisco laughing and following behind them.

 

❅

 

He forgets about it for a while. Three weeks go by and he’s been busy running around, his Flash and CSI duties leaving little time for him to do anything other than eat and pass out at the end of the day.

He meets Iris for coffee and she looks almost as frazzled as he feels. She tells him about the different articles she’s writing and the deadlines that are keeping her up at night and he squeezes her hand in sympathy before pulling away, wrapping his hand around his cup of coffee and trying not to crush it under his grip.  
It’s not her fault that they didn’t work out. It’s not either of their fault’s.

Doesn’t make it hurt any less.

She tucks her head against his chest when they hug goodbye and he puts his nose to her hair, breathing her in.

It’s not either of their faults that they’re so busy now that they barely have time to see each other.

Doesn’t make it hurt any less.

 

That night, he dreams of blue.

There are no flashes now. Just everything in shades of blue.

He doesn’t dream of anything specific. It just feels like he’s walking for miles and miles, crossing fields of blue corn and down walkways of blue stone.

He doesn’t reach where he was walking to. He doesn’t know how he knows that, but he knows it as a certainty.

He was going somewhere, and he kept thinking that when he got there… _then_ he’d be okay.

He wakes up confused and sad. Sad like he’s missed out on something, something that would have made his chest feel light and maybe would have even taken a few of his problems away.

Confused, because he could have sworn that someone had been walking next to him, but he never looked. He never actually saw anyone but he _knew_.

As he looks up at the ceiling, trying to remember more of the dream, he realizes that his right arm is flung out to the side, hand curled slightly as if reaching for something. He looks at his hand and watches as he curls it closed and pulls his arm against his side.

He turns on his side and squints at his alarm clock as he tugs his comforter over his cold shoulder.

4:17 am.

 

❅

 

He runs out to the wind turbines in the morning as a warm-up. He doesn’t have to be into work until the afternoon, so he takes his time running there and swerving through the structures. He runs up the side of one and marvels at the way they all seem to be completely frozen. He runs up one side of a blade and down the other, running straight down to the ground.

When he’s halfway down, he sees someone looking up at him from the base of the turbine.

Then he blinks and the person is gone.

Once he reaches the bottom, he runs around the farm trying to slow himself and to look for the person. He slows to a stop at the turbine he had run up.

There’s a set of boot prints in the dust at the base, but nowhere else. There are no prints leading up to them and they’re uneven like whoever had been standing there had their weight shifted to one side.

He stares at the prints for a minute, debating whether or not he’s going crazy.  
He crouches and touches the edge of one of the print and watches as the dust shifts under his finger.

A rush air gathers in a small dust devil and Barry shuts his eyes on instinct and when he opens them again, the prints are gone.

So maybe he _is_ going crazy.

It still wouldn’t be the worst thing that’s happened this year.

 

❅

 

He knows he should probably tell someone about it. Anybody at all, really.

But he doesn’t.

It isn’t causing any problems. Not yet, at least. It isn’t actively hurting him. It’s really only a minor distraction and he’s sure that once he gets used to it, he’ll barely notice it.

If it’s a meta, he doesn’t think that they’re trying to hurt him.

At least, it doesn’t feel like they are.

The flashes are comforting and they feel familiar. He sees the flashes twice more in the next week.

So he doesn’t tell anyone because there’s no need to, because he’s fine.

 

When he gets to work, Joe’s heading out and he tells Barry to grab his kit, that he’ll be waiting in the car.

Joe tells him about the case as they drive over. Robbery. One injury. No deaths. Chemical agents used and found at the scene.

When they get there, he thinks that Joe had downplayed the amount of ‘chemical agents’.

Almost the entire interior of the store is covered in gold. The smashed and empty cases are the only things not completely encased. He sighs and looks at Joe who shrugs. They both know who did this, but the scene still needs to be processed.

He texts Cisco quickly, asking him what the _hell_ Lisa had been thinking. He gets a short sentence in reply.

_It’s been one year._

He rubs his face and sighs roughly before pulling on some gloves.

After he finishes the scene, he texts Cisco to let Lisa know that the guard will be okay and will be keeping all of his appendages.

He knows that, even when they pretend not to, Snarts care.

Deep down. You know, like _really_ deep down.

The proof is in the sacrifice.

The proof is in the anger.

 

He just hopes that Rory is still on the Waverider, that he won’t have to save anyone from burning buildings today.

 

He writes up his report feeling only a little impressed that there was no evidence left at the scene. Besides, you know. The gold.

When he gets home, there’s a blue diamond sitting on his kitchen counter. He closes his door quietly and flashes through his apartment before stopping in front of the diamond, satisfied that there isn’t anyone lying in wait for him.

The diamond is beautiful. It isn’t all that big, but it reflects light like nothing else he’s ever seen. He picks it up and moves it around, watching the way the light refracts in it and the way it shines a rainbow onto the cabinets. He brings it into his bedroom and puts down on the top of his dresser.

He won’t tell anyone about this, either.

He’s pretty sure it was Lisa, and he’ll let have her fun and accept the gift for what it is.

 

❅

 

Iris shows up at the station two weeks later to bring Joe some lunch and to drag Barry out of his lab to the new cafe down the street with the fancy name. She seems better than the last time Barry saw her, and when he asks she tells him that she only has one more deadline this month, that she finished the other articles.

“So I have a little more free time, thank god. It’s nice to actually sleep at night again,” she says, laughing and he laughs with her.

She’s still looking at the menu behind the counter when the line moves forward so he steps around her so she’ll have time while he orders. When he looks back at her, he sees a man leaning against the window outside.

He’s facing away from the shop, back against the window. He has one foot up, heel hooked on the ledge under the window.

He has his hands shoved into the pockets of his dark blue suit, and from this angle, Barry can see he’s wearing blue suede shoes and Barry almost laughs incredulously.

“What do you think, Barr?” He startles and looks down at Iris and she’s staring at him, expectant.

“I’m sorry, what?” She rolls her eyes and smiles and when she looks back at the menu, he looks at the window.

The man is gone.

“I was thinking about getting the ham and apple panini. Do you think it’ll be good?” He focuses his attention back to her.

“Oh, um. Yeah, I think so. I think I’ve had that before and it tastes better than it sounds.” He steps to the side to get in front of the person behind the counter.

 

After they order and get their food, they sit at one of the small tables.

“You doing okay?” He looks up from where he’s already eaten half of his sandwich and sees, instead of her normal look of slight disgust at his eating habits, concern.

“What? Yeah, of course, I’m okay. Why’d you ask?” She shrugs and takes a bite of her sandwich, chewing thoughtfully.

“You just seem distracted lately,” she says, looking down at the rest of her sandwich. She looks guilty as if she thinks she’s the cause and he reaches out and squeezes her wrist comfortingly before picking up the next half of his sandwich.

“I’m fine, Iris. I promise. Just been really busy. Working a lot.” She bites her lip, still looking like she doesn’t believe him. “It’s a hard job, being one of the people stopping Central City from being sucked into a black hole in the ground,” he jokes, and she snorts.

“Whatever you say, Barr.” He grins, happy that she’s lost that guilty look.

“I’m a hero, Iris. Everything I say is rig—ow!” He dramatically flinches when she punches him in the shoulder and laughs.

 

He feels bad, later, for not telling her. She’s his best friend and he knows she cares, but that’s the problem. She has so many other things to worry about, she doesn’t need to worry if Barry is going crazy or not.

 

He dreams in blue again that night. He’s in a blue building that has more turns than hallways and he’s following someone.

He wakes up dizzy from the blue carpet and the blue walls.

He’s dizzy from chasing someone that he couldn’t see, could only get glimpses of around corners before they disappeared.

He remembers the man with the blue suede shoes and he lets out a long sigh. Maybe he _should_ tell someone.

He turns on his side and looks at the clock right as minute changes.

4:23 am.

 

❅

 

He gets swamped at work and has to cut down on his patrols around the city and he’s so busy that he forgets about the fact that he’s apparently going crazy. He’s so busy that he’s exhausted by the time he gets home at the end of the day, trying to work longer hours and flash around the city as much as possible, not wanting someone to get hurt because he’s busy at work.

He’s waiting for the results from hair found at a murder scene. He rests his chin in the palm of his hand and closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slow, letting himself relax and rest while he waits.

He’s startled into almost falling off his stool when a voice whispers his name, close enough that he’s sure he can feel their breath on his neck.

He rights himself and looks around behind him, spinning in a way that he’s sure looks like he’s gone off the deep end.

“Barry?” He turns towards the entrance of the lab and sees Joe, arms spread in question and a file in his hand.

He settles with the thought that it was Joe that said his name and his half-asleep mind made it sound softer.

He stands and grabs the results from the printer just as it’s coming out and starts to explain to Joe what they say.

He ignores the fact that the voice sounded nothing like Joe’s and had a familiar lilt to it that he couldn’t place.

 

“I think I’m haunted,” he doesn’t say when he’s at the Labs later. He doesn’t mention anything when Cisco and Caitlin ask if he’s feeling okay.

“I’m just tired,” is what he _does_ say. They look about as suspicious as he thought they would, both geniuses in their own right; they’re both far too smart to believe the lie.

They’re also far too smart to start pressing him for answers they know he’s not going to give.

They don’t ask again and he tries his best to not look like he thinks he’s being stalked by a super elusive and harmless meta.

Or haunted.

Whichever one makes more sense.

Which is neither and both.

 

❅

 

There’s an alert for a hostage situation and Barry looks confusedly at his watch. It’s a little late for there to be enough people at a bank or jewelry store to take hostage. He gets the address and as he runs, Cisco fills him in.

“It’s a domestic abuse situation. The father has taken his wife and two children hostage. He has a shotgun and police are already on the way. He may have already shot the mom, so he’s got an itchy trigger finger.”

Barry runs towards the edge of the city when it’s more suburban and he slows to a stop a little down the street. He quickly cases the house and finds where the husband is waving the shotgun around angrily, face red. Barry clenches his jaw and phases through the wall right behind the husband, grabbing the shotgun out of his hands before the husband could even react.

The husband is shocked still for a moment before lunging at Barry. He raises the shotgun and bashes the husband in the nose and he falls back in shock.

He opens the front door to let the cops know that it’s okay before rushing back to the mother, bleeding from where the shotgun pellets had hit her in the shoulder and chest. He picks her up as gently as he can when he catches sight of the two children, huddled and holding each other, faces streaked with tears.

He swallows hard and when he opens his mouth the first time he can’t get any words out. He tries again, and still his voice wobbles.

“You’re okay now. Your mom is okay, and he can’t hurt you anymore.” They continue to just stare at him but they’ve stopped crying.

He startles at the sound of the officers coming in through the door behind him. He turns to rush out the door when he sees the face of one of the officers.

He takes a step back in shock. The officer looks at him out of the corner of his eye in confusion but Barry is already running out the door.

He drops the mother off and makes sure she’s seen to before heading back to the Labs.   
He flashes back into his normal clothes and tells Cisco not to call him unless there’s an emergency and goes home.

 

When he walks into his apartment he just stands there, staring out into nothing.

Apparently, he actually _is_ haunted because he could have sworn that, for just _one_ second, that that officer was Leonard Snart.

He rubs his hand down his face and then up through his hair, tugging on it slightly.

Why the _hell_ is Leonard snart haunting _him_?

 

❅

 

He almost brings it up to Joe when he goes over for Sunday dinner. He keeps thinking about it all through dinner, and when he’s helping Joe with the dishes he gets as far as opening his mouth.

When Joe starts to look at him, he remembers the look on Joe’s face every time Barry said he wanted to visit his dad, whenever he was adamant that the man in the lightning was _real_ _and Dad didn’t kill Mom it was the man in yellow_ —

He closes his mouth before Joe’s head finishes turning towards him.  
He dries the pot Joe hands him and matches Joe’s soft smile with one of his own.

 

He learned a long time ago that sometimes it’s better to keep a secret than to have no one believe you.

 

❅

 

There are a lot of questions that Barry has.

Some of them are general.

Why him? Why did _he_ become the Flash? Why is time such a mess of contradictions, so much so that it gives him a headache to think about? Why does he have to watch so many people die? Why _can’t_ he save everyone?

Some are more specific to all this..haunting shit that’s happening.

Why him? Why did Snart choose him to haunt? Why couldn’t he go haunt Lisa or Rory? _Is_ he haunting Lisa and Rory? Is Snart having a haunting affair with him?

He shakes his head a few times in an effort to stop wherever that train of thought was heading.

He taps his pen on his desk and stares at the report in front of him that he’s supposed to be doing. The words all blur as he’s tugged back into thinking about Snart.

 

Barry knew that a lot of his friends up and left and mentioned that his villains were going with them. He remembers huffing out a laugh at the way they sounded confused that his _villains_ were coming along, even if it was just to steal things throughout time.

He also remembers how worn down they looked when they came to help with the Dominators. He remembers his eyes going almost immediately to the empty space next to Rory. He remembers the harsh twist of guilt he felt at the sight of that empty space. He couldn’t believe—Snart couldn’t be—could he? The lines on Rory’s face read of grief but…could he really be?

Ray telling him that Snart was dead, that he died so that they’d all be free and to save his teammates' lives, didn’t help his guilt.

He remembers after Rory saved them all and after everyone went home, that he leaned against a wall and let his head thump back, breathing through the stinging in his eyes.

He remembers not wanting to even try to understand why Snart dying, his nemesis and an unrepentant criminal, made something in his gut twist horribly.

He’s startled out of thinking about Snart by someone yelling from the bullpen.

 

The next night he’s fighting a meta dressed in a baseball uniform with superhuman strength who punched his way through the side of a bank and into the vault. When Barry runs at him the first time, he takes a metal bat to the face, throwing him a good thirty feet away. He starts monologuing and he calls himself ‘The Mad Batter’, causing Barry to roll his eyes and Cisco to make a disgusted noise over the comms.

“I came up with better names when I was playing Heroes and Villains with my action figures as a kid,” Cisco says bitterly and Barry has to bite his bottom lip to keep from laughing.

“Focus, Cisco.”

“Right, yeah.” He tells Barry the speed he has to reach to knock the meta out, but before he runs off to gain momentum, something pops into his head.

“Not that I’m not having a _ball_ , but you really _struck out_ this time.” He rushes off before he can hear the meta reply, running down city blocks before running up a building and back down it. As he’s running back towards the bank he hears a noise, almost like a voice but he can’t place it.

He punches the meta so hard he goes flying through the wall, back into the vault. He climbs through the hole and stands over the meta and can’t help grinning a little.

“Yer out,” he says to himself, dragging the vowels out like an umpire. When he picks the meta up and runs off to the station, he hears that noise again, a little louder.

He can place it this time. He doesn’t feel that bad that he couldn’t figure it out at first, having only heard the sound once before, years ago.

It was the sound of Snart laughing.

 

❅

 

His good mood doesn’t last long after that.

The next morning, Cisco calls him to tell him a robbery was in progress. He jolts out of bed and runs to the Labs, grabbing his suit and getting to the bank as soon as possible.

By the time he gets there, the robbers had already shot someone. The security guard was lying on the ground, motionless, and one of the robbers was pointing his gun at the head of a girl who had to be fourteen years old at most. She was crying, as was her mother who was half pushed up from the floor in her attempt to do _anything_ to stop her child from being shot.

Barry had him disarmed and knocked to the ground before he or the other robber even noticed him. He takes the gun apart and tosses it next to the robber before running at the other robber just starting to turn around. He bashes the robber’s face against the glass divider and the man drops.

Once they’re both subdued, he checks on the security guard while two of the hostages walk towards the doors, their hands up, and opens them to yell for the police. He checks for the guard’s pulse and finds none. He sighs and clenches his eyes briefly before running back to the Labs.

Caitlin gives him a sad look while Cisco pats him consolingly on the back. He manages a small smile for them before he goes home and showers, getting ready for his shift.

When he gets into work, he finds that he has to go over the evidence from the robbery. He goes through the different bullet casings and the fingerprints found at the scene. He picks up the last piece of evidence and stares at it.

It’s the bullet that killed the guard. He stares at it and feels something horrible twist in his chest. He takes a deep breath and lets it out harshly before cleaning the blood off of it and taking it down to the weapons analyst.

His hand shakes slightly when he hands the bullet over, but thankfully the analyst doesn’t notice, just smiles at him before she loads one of the guns, the one he took apart.

He leaves her to it, but can’t shake that horrible twisting feeling for the rest of the day.

 

By the time he gets home, he’s drained and starving. He puts a pot of water on to boil before quickly eating one of Cisco’s protein bars. He throws the wrapper away before going to the couch and throwing himself face down on it. He groans, loudly and petulantly, into the pillow he lands on.

“ _Chill_ out, Barry.” He jolts and pushes up from the couch, head swiveling to look around for the source of the voice with one foot on the ground, getting ready to stand.

There’s no one there, of course. After the panic subsides, he’s able to place the voice.

He falls back down onto the pillow and groans louder.

 

❅

 

They’re getting more frequent, he thinks.

The…hauntings. After that night, he sees flashes of blue almost every time he’s running. He catches glimpses of blue out of the corner of his eyes and turns just in time to see the blue suede shoes before they disappear around a corner. Sometimes he’ll hear laughter. It’s mostly when, he assumes, Snart thinks he’s giving someone attitude. Barry has to fight almost constantly to not let his lips twitch up into a smile, the sound of Snart laughing, laughing at Barry snarking back at people, making him want to laugh as well.

He laughs the most often when it’s Joe that Barry’s giving lip to.

Barry’s so used to his…presence now that he stops wondering if he’s going crazy and just starts to accept it.

It’s not a conscious decision, but it just happens one night in bed.

He’s woken up from another dream of all blue. This time he’s walking through the woods. He recognizes them, but it’s daylight in this dream. The trees are blue with blue trunks and blue leaves. The grass is the color of the sky and the dirt and dead leaves remind him of the deep dark blue of the ocean. He’s heading for a clearing and he knows that passed the tree he’s walking towards, Snart will be there waiting for him.

He’s about to step around the tree when the crack of a branch behind him makes him turn and then he’s opening his eyes and staring at the window that’s glowing a dark blue and he thinks he’s still dreaming at first. Then he recognizes the blue as the delicate light of dawn.

He twists his head around to look at his alarm clock behind him.

4:45 am.

He settles back down and relaxes the muscles that tensed up at his sudden wakefulness.

From behind his closed lids, he can see the way the light from the window goes dark for a moment before coming back.

He smiles and before he drops back off to sleep, he thinks that he hopes Snart is at least having fun bugging the shit out of him.

 

❅

 

He’s rushing around his apartment, putting the toast in the toaster so it’ll be popped by the time he’s finished showering and dressing. He leans back against his kitchen counter and chews on a protein bar and grabs the toast the moment they pop and spreads butter and jelly on them and is back leaning against his counter as the toast is still hot enough to burn the tips of his fingers.

He sighs when he’s done and brushes the crumbs off his shirt as he checks the time. He curses at how late it is and starts to run.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees him.

There’s someone sitting on Barry’s couch, slightly blurred by the speed force around him. He looks and, as clear as day, there’s Snart.

He has both arms spread over the back of the couch and one ankle crossed over his knee. He’s dressed in a full suit, every piece as blue as the next. He’s wearing blue suede shoes and the socks that Barry can see from where Snart’s pants pull up, are a dark blue that’s almost black.

He’s not wearing his usual smug grin but instead looks thoughtful.

Barry stops running and, instantly, the image of Snart disappears.He stands there in shock and frantically looks around as if maybe Snart just teleported somewhere else in the apartment.

When he sees nothing, he stares at where Snart was sitting. There’s no indent in the couch and he knows that if he walked over, the leather would be cool to the touch.

He shrugs and runs off, checking the couch one last time before he phases through his door.

 

❅

 

It all wears him down sometimes. He can’t help but think that he’s never going to be _enough_ ; he’s never going to be fast enough, strong enough, _good_ enough.

He’s lost so much already that he wonders if he’s even a help to the city at all.  
It was because of him that Eobard become…Eobard. It’s because of him that his mom and dad are both dead now.  
It’s because of him that Eddie is on the list of the dead that he keeps in his head.  
It’s because of him that him and Iris never even had a chance; he loved her too strongly to the point where he started to love the concept of her without even noticing it. And, of course, he was right there for Iris afterward Eddie so it made sense that they’d get together.

It’s because of him that Iris needed comforting at all.

It’s his fault that she has that sad edge to her smile now, that her smile doesn’t always reach her eyes. That she still rubs her ring finger, twisting an engagement ring that no longer sits there, that sits in a jewelry box her mom left her on her dresser.

Sometimes everything in his life is just so hard to carry.

So he finds it easier to just push it all away and continue on, even though he’s holding his breath every second of the day with the fear of just falling apart.

 

He gets dragged out of a nightmare where he was surrounded by hundreds of dead bodies, all exact copies of the security guard from the bank, face down on the endless black floor.

Suddenly he’s surrounded by furniture, by walls, all in blue. He looks around and he knows that this is Joe’s house in the way you just know things in dreams.

He’s still feeling a little panicked from the nightmare, but when his brain catches up to what’s happening, he calms down. He smiles as he knows even before he starts turning that he’ll see Snart, casually hanging out by the fireplace like he owns the place.

Snart sits in the chair that’s been there longer than Barry has lived in this house with the air of a king sitting on his throne.

In the quiet, he can hear the clock ticking.

“What? No hot cocoa this time?” Snart tilts his head back in slight amusement and lifts his hands from where they were folded on the ankle crossed over his knee and brings them, fingers locked together and pointer fingers steepled, to his chin.

“I thought that I deserved more than just some mediocre cocoa sans marshmallows.” He startles so bad that he takes a step back. The edge of the couch hits the back of his leg and he falls back, sitting down hard.

He’s heard Snart talk a few times now, but now he can tell that his voice had always been quiet, breathy in a way that sounded very far away.

It’s much different to hear it from right in front of him.

He’d forgotten how much of a… _presence_ Snart was. Everything about him took up space; from the way he slouched in and over things to the way everything he said had a sharp edge to it. He took up space like he belonged there. Much more so when he was wearing his ridiculous coat, but the blue suit he’s wearing now does the job just as well.

Barry didn’t realize how much he missed that.

He realizes he’s been staring with his mouth slightly agape for what was probably entirely too long going by Snart’s raised eyebrow. He clears his throat and slouches back against the couch cushion.

“Finally come to see me in person?” Snart’s lips purse in a familiar way as if he was trying not to smile.

“I don’t know what you mean, Barry,” he says, and unclasps his hands, opening them out to the side as if to prove it, an innocent look on his face that Barry’s sure has charmed many a mark. Barry rolls his eyes.

“You know exactly what I mean, Snart. You’ve been haunting me for months. Why don’t you go haunt your sister. I’m sure she’d be happy as a clam to have you popping around corners and scaring the shit out of her.” Snart’s gaze sharpens and he uncrosses his legs. He leans forward and rests his arms on his thighs, hands dangling between his legs.

“How is she?” Barry raises an eyebrow at him.

“If you wanna know, why don’t you just take your ghostly ass out and find her?” Snart closes his eyes briefly and lets out a harsh sigh before locking eyes with Barry.

“Because, _Flash_ , I’m not actually a ghost,” he says with the tone of the long-suffering making Barry snort.

“I’m sorry to break this to you, Snart, but uh, _yeah_ you are. You died. Like, over a year ago.” He grabs the couch pillow and hugs it to his chest, not understanding but hating the twist in his stomach at saying that out-loud.

“Was there a body?” Barry looks at him blankly. “Was. There. A body, Bartholomew.” Barry stares at him and shakes his head slowly. “Well. There you go. I’m not dead.”

“You _blew up_! Of course, there’s no body! You were probably disintegrated or, or, or something!”

“Think about it. _Really_ think about it. The Oculus, the very stream of Time itself, was set free right next to me, right _around_ me.” He stops and straightens slightly, hands pressing down on his knees while he watches Barry.

Barry takes another look at the room around him and how everything seems perfect, exactly as he remembered it. When he looks out the living room window, all he sees is blackness. The clock on the mantle has been ticking the same second over and over again the whole time.

“You became a part of the Force,” he says in awe as Snart rolls his eyes.

“Calm down, Obi-wan. But yes, I’m part of your precious Speed Force. A personal favor from the Oculus.” Snart looks around the room before muttering, “It sure beats the hell out of dying.”

Barry is still staring at him in shock because of _course_. It makes so much more sense.

“So that’s why you’re haunting me and not your sister. Right, not haunting,” he corrects when Snart gives him a look, “but, I don’t know. Stalking?” Snart gives him an even worse look.

“Despite your poor word choice, _yes._ That is one of the reasons why I’m here with you instead of Lisa.” Barry cocks his head to the side.

“One?” Snart leans back in the chair, his normal arrogant and pleased expression making its way back onto his face. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That's for me to know and you to find out. I’m a man of mystery, Barry. You can’t expect me to just go around telling everyone everything, now can you?”

God. Snarts and their fucking secrets. Barry rolls his eyes so hard his head tilts back slightly.

“Whatever, Snart. I have more important things to do than play whatever stupid game you’re playing.” He stands and tosses the pillow back down on the couch, but when he tries to take a step forward, he can’t.

“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” Snart says, standing from the chair in the naturally graceful way that he does everything. He takes slow steps towards Barry until he’s close enough that Barry can see the stubble on his chin and the scar above his lip.

He doesn’t stand directly in front of Barry, but rather slightly to the side, his shoulder almost brushing Barry’s chest. He has his eyes cast down like he normally does, looking anywhere else but at Barry.

“There are very few things that are more important than this.”

Barry opens his mouth, a question already on the tip of his tongue, but before he can even make a sound, Snart’s eyes snap up to his.

Barry gasps awake, sitting straight up in bed. He looks frantically around the room, thinking maybe he’d catch a glimpse of Snart, of blue, but all he sees is the blue of the first light of morning.

He scrubs at his face and sighs before kicking his legs over the side of his bed. There’s no point in trying to get back to sleep, he knows he won’t.

He leans his arms on his thighs, a posture mimicking Snart in his dream, and lets his head hang between his shoulders.

He entertains the idea, briefly, that maybe that actually was Snart. Maybe Snart really is following him around and keeps dream walking into Barry’s dreams.

He lifts his head and stares at the clock, already hearing the voices he’s heard his whole life. The voices of all the people who told him he was crazy, that never believed him. The voice of Joe yelling at him when he ran away to visit his dad, the voices of the kids in school. The voices of the cops in the precinct whispered behind his back.

Yeah, maybe Snart is actually in the Speed Force and is haunting him for a very specific reason that he refuses to share.

He stands and looks at the clock right as the hour changes, the red numbers telling him that’s it’s 5:00 in the morning. He groans in frustration, pissed off at a man that’s been dead for over a year, before heading to the shower. He might as well get ready for work.

Maybe Snart’s haunting him. Maybe Snart has some mission from the Oculus that he needs to complete. Maybe the Speed Force let Snart have free reign to jump around and pop in and out of existence.

 

Or maybe he’s just fucking crazy.

 

❅

 

He doesn’t see Snart again for a while. No hide nor hair of him for weeks. After a full month, he starts to relax. He stops looking over his shoulder and watching corners.

His heart stops racing every time he catches a glimpse of a blue after another two weeks of those glimpses just being a woman’s dress or a car.

When a full two months had passed with nothing—no flashes of blue, no dreams of blue, no _Snart_ —he fully relaxes.

The problem, though, that without the distraction of the hauntings, he finds that there’s a familiar, aching emptiness in his chest that he hadn’t noticed was gone. He catches himself rubbing at his chest a lot, a habit that he hadn’t had before the hauntings.

It takes another week after that feeling comes back, almost a full nine weeks after the blue stops, that he finally admits to himself that they weren’t hauntings at all. He knows this. He knew this all along, but there’ll always be a part of him that wants the unexplainable to be real.

Hallucinations.

That’s all they were.

He comes to this realization as he’s changing into a pair of STARLabs sweats early in the morning, getting ready to go against Cisco’s obstacle course that he’s so proud of. He wraps his hands and clenches his fists to test the tension, hoping that he’ll be able to lose himself in the exercise and forget about how that feeling in his chest is growing every day.

Which is, of course, when he sees Snart sitting on the gym mat leaning back against the bench press, rocking the foot of the leg he has outstretched back and forth.

He curses and nearly flings his water with how startled he is.

He freezes and just stares at Snart who is, of course, slowly raising an eyebrow at him. He looks amused and Barry feels a flash of relief before the dread kicks in.

Oh.

Well.

At least one thing is consistent in his life.

He’s still crazy. And hallucinating.

“I think I should be flattered that you’d think your brain would choose me of all people to hallucinate.” Barry takes a step back before he realizes that he had been mumbling to himself that it was just a hallucination.

He unfreezes and walks over to the bench press to put his water bottle down on it behind Snart’s head. Under the smell of sweat that’s ingrained into the room, he catches a slightly dark, smoky scent. It takes him a second for him to recognize it as Snart’s cologne, the same one he was wearing the last time Barry saw him when he dropped Snart back off in Siberia. He takes a slow breath in as he turns away and lets it out slowly. The hallucinations have moved passed being simply visual and auditory which is…concerning. He swallows down his worry, though, and heads over to the computer set up to control Cisco’s sparring bots. The computer is already on, strangely enough, and open to one of the workouts.

“I mean, I would think that I’d be pretty low on your list of ‘guilt hallucinations’, or whatever you want to call it.” Barry ignores him and finishes setting up the bot and stretches out his neck and arms while the bot gets into position. When the bot is all ready, he walks into the designated area and brings his fists up.

“I can only imagine how long of a list it is, too. I mean, up top would have to be your mother, of course.” The bot almost lands a hit as Barry tenses up in shock but manages to dodge at the last second. “The tragic death of Nora Allen, all because her son becomes the amazing, the very _heroic,_ Flash.” Barry flinches at Snart’s emphasis on ‘heroic’ but shakes himself out, dodging the next swing.

“Then would probably be Doc Allen.” The next swing from the bot actually connects this time and Barry blames the way he’s suddenly breathless on that. “And ‘Detective Pretty-Boy’, of course, following after.” Snart sounds like he’s pondering it and Barry doesn’t even need to turn around to know that he probably has his hands up to his face, fingers tapping his mouth as if he was thinking hard.

“Or maybe it would be Mr. Raymond? Lost to the great ol’ black hole _you_ opened.” Barry lands a punch on the bot that’s hard enough to make it stutter and probably gave it a dent under the padding. “Ah, there it is. _There’s_ that anger we all know and love.”

He just dodges the bot for a few moments, not trusting himself to not break it completely if he swings.

“Is this how you’ve been handling things? Hm, Barry?” Barry grits his teeth and dodges another swing.

He hears Snart sigh and then the shuffling of clothing and shoes of Snart standing up.

“Now, I know a few things about repression,” Snart says, a very sarcastic drawl to his words that Barry knows he gets to play off when he’s being serious. Barry is tempted to snort at the understatement. “So I know that all repression does is give you a hole in your chest you can’t fill and a hatred you don’t know how to live without.”

Barry sucks in a harsh breath at the way Snart’s tone goes soft, soft like it did in Siberia, but doesn’t let anything show on his face when he sees Snart move into his peripheral vision. He clenches his fists harder and gives the bot a few jabs in where the kidneys would be before dodging back out of its reach.

“But of course, what would I know that you don’t already know? I’m only a hallucination, after all,” Snart says, and Barry almost laughs how well he knows Snart, how he can picture the bitchy wave of his hand to accompany his bitchy tone.

Then, Barry sees a second figure moving behind Snart and he turns on reflex.

The second figure isn’t facing them, and at first, Barry doesn’t really know what he’s looking at. Then he realizes that the wall he’s looking at is actually the mirror Cisco put into place so Barry could check his form.

And the figure is actually Snart’s reflection and Barry’s mouth drops open in shock.

The reflection’s head tilts to the side slightly in question before Snart turns around to see what Barry’s looking at. Then he catches Barry’s eyes through the reflection and smirks.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Snart says and between one blink and the next, he’s gone.

 

❅

 

Barry races to the cortex, thankful that no one is in the Labs today. He leans over the console and logs into the computer. He brings up the security feed and clicks through a few of the cameras before he finds the—now empty—gym. He starts rewinding the footage until he sees his lightning trail as he runs backward into the gym.

He slows down his rewinding and goes, frame by frame until he gasps and stands up straight.

There he is.

Snart’s there, facing away from Barry.

He leans back in and jumps between the frames and, sure enough, Snart is there one second and gone the next. He rubs at his mouth, the shock not even fully processing because he’s spent _months_ , god he’s spent so long thinking that he had finally lost his mind and months before that thinking that maybe ghosts _do_ exist.

But no.

Snart has been, actually and for real, physically there the whole time.

He has the frames stopped at right before Snart turns around to look at the mirror, Barry staring behind him with his fists still raised, having not dropped them in his shock.

“Holy shit,” he mutters to himself, still not fully believing it.

He takes a deep breath and rewinds the footage until he sees when he entered the room. He slows the rewinding down a little and pauses it when he sees that Snart was there before Barry even entered the room.

He quickly rewinds until he doesn’t see Snart in the room and then hits play. He brings his hand up to his mouth and bites on the skin of his thumb while he watches.

The room is completely empty, nothing moving.

There’s no sound yet, and Barry turns up the volume so he won’t miss anything.

When Snart appears, there’s no sound, no precursor other than a slight shimmering in the air. Snart comes through the slight shimmering mid-step as if he was just walking through a portal. He looks around the gym and straightens his suit jacket, turning slightly as he looks.

Barry watches Snart wander around the gym a little, poking at the equipment before making his way to the computer and looking at it curiously. He leans over and taps at the screen a few times before his head whips around to stare at the door and he straightens.

Barry looks at the time stamp.

It was when Barry arrived at the Labs.

Snart tugs at his shirtsleeve, straightening it absentmindedly as he watches at the door. He slowly walks over to the bench press and lowers himself to the floor, leaning back against the bench.

He brings one of his knees up towards his chest while his other leg stays outstretched, foot rolling back and forth.

He’s still watching the door when Barry walks through it.

Barry pauses the video and pushes off of the console and rubs at his forehead.

“What is _up_ , bitches!” Barry jumps and spins around, too fast that Cisco probably couldn’t even see the movement. “Oh, whoa. Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to scare you,” he says before taking a sip of his coffee.

“Cisco, thank god.” Cisco furrows his eyebrows as he lowers the cup from his lips.

“Yeah, that’s what the ladies like to say.” Barry rolls his eyes and gestures at him to come over.

“This is serious. Come here, what do you see?” Cisco raises an eyebrow but obligingly walks forward and glances at the screen when Barry motions at it.

“Whoa, hey. When did you hang out with Snart?” Barry feels himself getting lightheaded. “And when was he wearing a suit? You didn’t let him hang out after you grabbed him from the past, did you? God, who knows what shit he pulled.”

Barry backs up until he sits down hard into one of the chairs, rolling backward slightly and breathing heavily.

He leans forward and puts his head in his hands.

“Oh, shit, man. You okay? I mean, it’s not the end of the world if Snart _did_ pull a heist or something. Like, how much trouble could he get into _now_? The man’s dead—“

“No, he’s not,” Barry croaks, rubbing his face

“What?” Barry lifts his head and looks up at Cisco.

“That video is from _today_ , Cisco. He isn’t fucking dead. He’s never _been_ dead.” Cisco puts his coffee down slowly.

“Now, Barr. I know you and him had a weird like, tête-à-tête thing going on, but—“

“ _Cisco._ Stop. Look at the timestamp.” Cisco leans forward and squints before straightening quickly.

“What—“

“I know.” Cisco looks at him in shock and leans heavily against the console.

“What?!”

“I _know._ ”

Barry scoots the chair a little closer and stares at the time stamp, a sense of relief falling over him. There Snart is, as clear as anything, sitting and waiting for Barry to walk into the room.

5:30 am.

 

❅

 

They don't talk much until Caitlin arrives. Cisco asks, wants an explanation, but.

Barry isn’t explaining this twice.

Instead, Cisco goes through the footage and tries to figure out what the shimmering was when Snart appeared while Barry eats a protein bar in the kitchen.

When he hears the sound of Caitlin saying good morning to Cisco an hour or so later, he flashes into the cortex. Caitlin glares at him as her ponytail gets blown wildly around, but Cisco spins around in his chair with an enthusiastic look on his face.

“Cisco said you had something that I needed to see?” Barry rubs at his mouth as he strides closer, nervous even though he knows he has proof now.

“I mean, I don’t even know where to start,” he says, eyes flicking to Cisco’s briefly. Caitlin looks over his face before her face softens and she turns to pull over one of the rolling chairs. She parks herself right next to Cisco and looks up at him with a small smile.

“The beginning is normally the easiest.” He looks over his audience, at Cisco’s supportive thumbs up and Caitlin’s understanding smile and wrings his hands before sighing and dropping them.

“Well. It started around six months ago when Leonard Snart, who had been dead almost a year, woke me up from a nightmare.” Caitlin sits up and turns immediately to Cisco who, while still looking at Barry in shock, tilts his head slightly towards her and nods.

“Barry—“

“It’s true, Caitlin,” Cisco says, cutting her off. He pushes his chair to the side and shows her the paused security feed. “That’s Snart, sitting in our workout room, not even two hours ago.” She quickly scoots her chair to get a closer look before looking at Cisco and then at Barry. She opens her mouth but closes it again with a shake of her head.

“I’m sorry, Barry. Please, continue.” Barry looks between them, searching their faces, before nodding and taking a deep breath.

“Okay,” he says, letting the breath out in a rush. “It was just these flashes of blue, at first. A nightmare that I didn’t remember except for all the _blue_. Then I started seeing these streaks of blue out of the corner of my eye, sometimes when I was running. And it kept getting worse. Well,” he says tilting his head and wiggling his hand, “worse is a strong word. It kept escalating. I would dream in all blue, and then—oh my god wait. The diamond!” He straightens and flashes off to his apartment to grab the diamond and coming back before Cisco and Caitlin could even question where he went. He holds the beautiful diamond out in front of him, pinched between his fingers.

“A diamond?” Cisco stands as he asks and takes the diamond and inspects it.

“Yeah! It was after the one year, um. The one year anniversary and it was just sitting on my counter when I got back from processing the evidence that Golden Glider left at the scene. I just thought it was her, I don’t know, thanking me? For not specifically calling her out in the report. But—“

“It was Snart,” Caitlin says, somewhat in awe. Cisco’s hands the diamond back over to Barry, who drops it into his pocket.”

“Uh-huh. Then there was the, um. Oh! The cafe!” Cisco sits back down roughly, making his chair roll back. “Can you find the footage of the outside of that new cafe, um. Shit. It’s in Italian. Lo, um. Lo, something.” Cisco turns in his chair and starts searching.

“I’m gonna need more than just ‘lo’, Barr. Do you know how many cafes start with ‘lo’?” Barry bites his lip and taps his fingers together in thought.

“Lo Zapho? It definitely started with a ‘z’.” Caitlin gives him a look.

“Lo Zaffiro?” Barry snaps his fingers and points at her, grinning.

“Yeah! That’s it. Lo Zaffiro Caffé. Can you get the footage from around there?” Cisco stops typing and just looks at Caitlin looks back.

Cisco starts to smile and then he’s putting his head down on the console and fucking _laughing_. Caitlin hides a grin behind her hand but still snorts. He looks on in bewilderment, hands open in confusion.

“What? What am I missing?” Caitlin sniffs but can’t stop smiling.

“You’re right. Lo zaffiro _is_ Italian,” she says, and his shakes his head slightly, wanting her to just _tell_ him. “It’s Italian for ‘the sapphire’.”

He feels his face go completely blank as Cisco raises his head, still snickering.

“I’m sorry, dude, but what the _hell_ is your life?” Barry drags a hand down his face.

“I honestly don’t know. Just,” he pauses, sighing, “can you find the security footage. It would have been like, a little over 4 months ago.”

“Yeah, give me a second. I’ll have it scan to look for you.” Barry watches as Cisco brings up the specific footage for the outside of the cafe. It’s from a traffic camera across the street, so it’s grainy, but once Cisco backs up far enough and the program finds Barry, he backs up until Barry and Iris are walking towards.

“Ready?” Cisco looks back and he nods, coming close and leaning over the back of his chair while Caitlin scoots in closer.

It’s footage in 6-second increments and it’s jumpy, so he watches closely to make sure he doesn’t miss it.

In between one frame and the next, there’s a man in a suit leaning against the window that Barry remembers.

“There! There,” he says, reaching his arm around Cisco to tap the spacebar, pausing the video, and then to point at the stilled image.

Cisco takes a still-shot of the image and Barry watches as the pixels move, getting slightly clearer.

“I mean, that’s really all I can do. The quality is too shitty to get much more but in my opinion? That looks a lot like Snart, to me.”

And it does. It’s in the way he leans, the profile of his face.  
He peeks at Caitlin out of the corner of his eye, worried that he’s going to see her unimpressed or, worse, sympathetic.

She’s staring at the screen with her mouth hanging open in shock, and when he actually turns his head to look straight at her, she looks back at him.

“I can’t. I can’t believe it,” she says, and he lets out a rush of air because, yeah, that’s the tone of someone who is seeing an impossible truth.

He takes a step back and straightens, and Cisco and Caitlin spin their chairs around. He crosses his arms and nods.

“Yeah, it’s, ya know. Kind of really hard to believe? After that, I saw him sitting in my living room as I was running out,” he says with the wave of a hand.

He starts to slowly pace, the nervous energy he has needing him to just do something.

“And then, I’m having a nightmare one night and then, poof. I’m standing in Joe’s living room looking exactly the same as that night except everything was _blue_.” He huffs a laugh, wondering for the first time if all the blue was from the Oculus, or if Snart added it for dramatic effect.

“That night? What night?” He stops pacing for a second and looks over at Caitlin, who quickly looks over at Cisco to see if he knows what Barry’s talking about.

“The night he broke into Joe’s house and warned me about Mardon and The Trickster,” he says, and he knows he probably doesn’t sound appropriately upset at that, but what can you do.

He starts walking back and forth again.

“I turned around and, of course, there’s Snart. Sitting in that fucking chair like he was last time. I thought I was dreaming, so I argued with him about why he was haunting _me_ of all people.” He watches as Cisco mouth ‘haunting?’ at Caitlin who just shrugged in response.

“Then he got pissy at me because he claimed that he wasn’t a ghost. He said that the Oculus didn’t actually kill him, but just shoved him into the speed force as a like, ‘hey thanks for freeing me’ present.”

“So, he’s trapped? In the speed force?” Barry shrugged at Cisco.

“I don’t think 'trapped' is the right word? It seemed like he had a mission or something.” He pauses and starts laughing.

Cisco and Caitlin ask him what he’s laughing about, looking concerned.

“Leave it to Leonard Snart to find a way to cheat death and steal dreams.”

 

Caitlin walks off the make a cup of coffee and Barry steals her seat, rolling the chair back and forth until Cisco glares at him. He gives Cisco a sheepish smile which makes him roll his eyes.

“So, why didn’t you tell us about…all of this?” Cisco doesn’t look at him when he asks, just takes a sip of coffee.

Barry sighs and rubs the back of this neck just as Caitlin walks back in. She notes Barry in her chair and goes to sit gracefully on the console between them instead.

“It doesn’t have to do with you guys, specifically. And it’s not like I could really believe it myself until today.”

“So what made you not tell _anyone_ , then?” Caitlin asks before blowing on her coffee. Barry leans an elbow on the console and gestures vaguely.

“I mean, you’ve got to understand. I went for over a decade being told that I didn’t see what I _knew_ I saw the night the Reverse Flash killed my mom.” Caitlin freezes from where she’s blowing on her coffee and Cisco sits up straight. “I was called crazy for _years_. And I thought—“ He cuts himself and looks down as he wrings his hands together.

“You thought…?” Caitlin goads softly.

It takes a few seconds before he’s able to explain.

“I thought I was actually going crazy.”

“Barr—“ Cisco starts, softly. Barry shakes his head but still doesn’t look up.

“It’s fine. I just, I figured that something had to give, you know?” He leans his chin on his hand, elbow still on the console, and stares at his suit hanging up on the mannequin. “We’ve been dealing with so much, we’ve seen so much. I’ve…well, I’ve fucked with time and, and, and,” he lifts his head and gestures vaguely towards them before dropping his hands into his lap limply, sighing roughly.

They both stay quiet, letting him talk.

“So, it’d make sense that, ya know, maybe something just snapped. That after everything, after everything we’ve lost and everything I’ve done, that I’d start seeing things. No one else noticed him, and sometimes I’d just _hear_ him and I was dreaming about him, so I just thought. I thought I was hallucinating.” He hangs his head and the silence in the Labs makes his ears ring.

He feels a hand on his shoulder, gentle at first before it curves towards his back and starts to pull. He looks up and it’s Caitlin, standing up and making him stand with her, dragging him closer.

“C’mere,” she says, gentle like he rarely ever hears her and his eyes start to burn. He steps in closer to her and leans down when she wraps her arms around him.

His hands are shaking when they wrap around her and he tucks his face against her neck, her hair tickling his face.

He knows a few tears are dropping onto her shoulder, knows she can probably feel it and starts to pull away.

She tightens her grip as another arm wraps around him, Cisco hugging the both of them together. Cisco presses his forehead against Barry’s shoulder and squeezes.

More than just his hands are shaking when he squeezes Caitlin tighter.

 

It takes him a couple of minutes, but he gets himself back under control, enough to lift his head out from where he had been hiding his face in Caitlin’s shoulder. He pulls one of his arms out of the embrace so he can wrap it around Cisco’s shoulders, squeezing them both and pressing his cheek to the top of Cisco’s head.

With one last sniff, he loosens his hold and they all take a step back from each other.

“I don’t know about you guys, but that’s probably my dose of sappy for the rest of the week,” Cisco says, his joking tone lightened by the slight redness around his eyes. Barry rolls his eyes as he snorts, shoving Cisco’s shoulder gently before sitting back down in the chair behind him.

“We need to figure out what’s going on with Snart,” Caitlin says, getting down to business as she sits back up on the console, head turned to look at the stilled security footage.

“Right, yeah.” Barry scoots his chair around until he’s in front of Caitlin and closer to the screen. “Where do we even start, though?” Caitlin purses her lips in thought.

“I guess we just go over what we know, right now,” she says, looking at Cisco who nods and walks over to the glass whiteboard and drags it closer.

“Alright, gang. So,” he says, uncapping a marker and writing ‘Ghost Snart’ on the top, underlining it twice. “What do we know about Snart, who we thought was dead but maybe actually isn’t but also maybe actually might be.”

Barry and Caitlin share a look before Barry squints at Cisco.

“Well, for one, we know he’s not a ghost, Cisco.” Cisco rolls his eyes and reaches up to messily wipe around the ‘Ghost’ and replaces it with ‘Undead’.

“Better?” Barry rolls his eyes but lets it go, nodding. Cisco writes below the underline that Snart isn’t dead. “Okay, what else?”

“Um, he said that he’s in the Speed Force,” Barry says and Cisco quickly starts writing. “And that the Oculus put him there. He said something about it being like a favor, so the Oculus sounds sentient, like the Speed Force.”

“How does he know, though?” Caitlin asks, standing and walking to the whiteboard. She uncaps a second marker and writes next to where Cisco had written down a bullet point about the Oculus’ sentience.

He can’t see what she writes until she steps away. She had simply put a dash next to Cisco’s writing and written ‘Communication?’. Barry looked at in confusion, head tilting to the side slightly.

“You think he _talked_ to the Oculus?” Caitlin nods and fiddles with the marker in her hand.

“I mean, how else would he know why it saved him? You said he talked about it like it was sentient, almost like how _you_ talk about the Speed Force, Barry.” He rubs at his mouth in thought as she turns and writes down ‘like Speed Force?’ next to her previous point.

“Okay, so we know, sort of, that the Oculus, instead of killing Snart, did him a favor and threw him into the Speed Force and it did this on purpose.” Cisco waits until both Barry and Caitlin hesitantly nod before making a new bullet.

He hesitates briefly, marker hovering and circling over the board in thought before writing down ‘getting stronger’.

“You think?” Barry asks and thinks back on all of the interactions.

“He started off as a flash in the corner of your eye, and now you’re having full conversations with the guy. Yeah, I think he’s getting stronger. He’s manifesting, or _staying_ , or _whatever_ , longer and longer.” Cisco pauses before drawing an arrow and jotting something down below it. “Either that or he’s been playing the long game.”

The point below the arrow reads ‘dramatic bitch’ and Barry has to laugh.

“You’d better hope he doesn’t show up here, Cisco. I don’t think he’d appreciate that all that much and doors can’t exactly stop him anymore.” Cisco looks like he’s debating whether or not to erase it before pointing his marker at Barry.

“I stand by my point. He’s a drama queen and I won’t let some paranormal villain scare me in my own home.” Barry holds his hands up in mock surrender, laughing.

“Okay, okay. Jeez.” Cisco looks down his nose at him haughtily but can’t hide the slight curl at the corner of his mouth. “Next, I’m thinking…put down that he’s tied to me specifically.” Cisco nods and writes while Caitlin looks at him curiously.

“If he’s in the Speed Force, then, of course, he’s tied to you.” Barry shakes his head and stands up, the restless energy building up too much in him to stay sitting.

“He appeared in the Labs before I even got here, and he left the diamond on my counter when I wasn’t even there,” he says, pacing slowly, thinking. “And I’m not the only one who can see him. Think about it. If he had access to the Speed Force and he could go wherever he wanted, knowing that people could see him, where would he go?” He spreads his arms out slightly in question, waiting until they both seem to get it.

“Lisa,” they both say at once and Barry nods.

“Exactly. The Speed Force isn’t allowing him to go wherever he wants. Just to places that are connected to _me_.”

They settle into silence for a few minutes, staring at the whiteboard in thought.

“You said that it sounded like he had a goal or a mission,” Caitlin says quietly and he nods. “What do you think it is?”

Barry crosses his arms and stares at the whiteboard, thinking back to the way Snart talked to him. Thinks back to the way Snart talked about how important this all was. How he talked about all those deaths, all those people, he still fees guilty for and how he scratched at wounds that haven’t even had a chance to heal.

How, when Barry noticed his reflection, he smirked as if Barry was finally falling into line, finally catching on to something obvious.

“I have absolutely no idea.”

 

“So I’m thinking that we start with the basics, right?” Cisco says with a wave of his hand, dropping crumbs from the muffin he sent Barry out to get for him. Barry picks a piece off of his own muffin and puts it in his mouth, humming in question at Cisco. “I mean like, why do ghosts _normally_ haunt people.”

Barry rolls his eyes but humors him, brushing the crumbs off of his fingers as he swallows.

“Unfinished business,” he says and Cisco gestures at him with his marker.

“Exactly! So what ‘unfinished business’ do you and Snart have?” Cisco asks with a lot of eyebrow motions, making Barry laugh.

“I don’t know, Cisco. He didn’t get to kill me when he was still alive? He couldn’t throw me into liquid nitrogen? I stepped on his foot once? Dude, the guy’s a mystery, okay?” He shoves a bigger piece of muffin into his mouth while Cisco looks at the board, tapping the marker against his mouth in thought.

“Yeah, but there’s gotta be something,” he mumbles and Barry shrugs.

“Well, whatever it is, Snart sure as hell isn’t going to tell us.” There’s a beat of silence before his and Cisco’s heads snap up to look at each other. Barry stands up out of his chair quickly and takes a step towards Cisco.

“Oh my god! Snart!” Caitlin stares at him and then at Cisco when he bounces in place before running to the computer.

“What? What is it?” She pushes off of the console in reaction to their excitement.

“If Snart’s in the Speed Force, and he’s _alive_ , then—“

“Oh my god, you could save Snart.” Barry grins and Caitlin and bounces a little in place.

“I could save Snart.”

 

❅

 

Barry runs off to work with the promise to head straight to the Labs after. Cisco had already been testing his Vibe equipment when Barry left, making sure it would hold up to following Barry into the Speed Force.

His phone vibrates as he’s looking down the lenses of his microscope and he pauses before focusing the lens. It vibrates again and he sighs and pulls away, snapping off one of his gloves and pulling his phone from his back pocket.

There are two texts from Cisco and he sighs before snapping off his there glove. He opens his phone and checks his messages.

_I think we should bring Lisa in_ , reads the first text.

_And tell her,_ reads the second. He stares at the messages for a full minute, tapping his phone screen to make sure it doesn’t go dark.

Of course, he understands why Cisco thinks that. It’s her brother, after all, and Cisco can probably use her as a focus if need be.

The problem is, well. That it’s her brother, and if they can’t actually bring him back, then they would have given her hope for nothing.

“Hey, Barr,” he hears from the doorway and he jumps out of his thoughts. When he looks, Joe’s standing in the doorway, an eyebrow raised. “You okay?”

“Oh, um. Yeah! Totally. Totally okay,” he says, fumbling out a message to Cisco that he hopes sounds affirmative and not just a bunch of keyboard smashes before locking his phone and tucking it away. Joe watches that and hums a little.

“Right, because that was a totally normal reaction. You wanna tell me what’s been up with you lately?” Barry stares at him, mouth open as he searches for something to say.

“Um. Nothing?” Joe gives him a look and walks further into his lab and sitting on a mostly empty table.

“Barr. I’ve known you your whole life. You think I don’t know when you’re hiding something?” Joe says it like a joke, but Barry can hear an undercurrent of sadness. He sighs and rubs the back of his head, at a loss of what to say.

“It’s really complicated, Joe,” he ends up going with, wincing a little at how lame of an answer it is.

Joe looks at him, eyes scanning his face.

“Is it related to the Flash?” Barry debates how to answer that because, well. Sort of? Or it’s related to his real life? Both?.

“Yeah, Joe. It’s really…”

“Complicated,” Joe finishes for him and Barry gives him an apologetic smile. “You promise to tell me about it soon?”

Barry nods and stands as Joe stands.

“Absolutely. I promise, Joe.” Joe gives him a playful glare.

“Yeah, you’d better. C’mere,” he says as he drags Barry into a tight hug. “Alright,” he says, pulling back and clapping Barry on the shoulder.

As Joe rounds the corner out of his office, Barry slumps and lets out a harsh breath.

He doesn’t even know how he’ll even begin to explain all this to Joe. Or _Iris,_ god she’s going to be so mad when she finds out he’s been hiding something from her.

He takes a deep breath and holds it for a few moments before nodding to himself and turning back to his work.

 

When he runs to the Labs, there's a bike parked in front of one of the side entrances. He mentally prepares himself before pushing through the doors.

After a few hallways, he hears the sound of Cisco’s voice, a slightly manic edge to it. When he rounds the corner, he sees why.

Lisa is standing in front of the glass whiteboard, face completely blank as she reads over their notes. Cisco has his hand pressed to his forehead in obvious stress as the other one gestures vaguely even though Lisa isn’t even facing him.

Barry pauses in the doorway, taking it all in.

“—and it’ll be better if we wai—Barry!” Cisco’s hand drops from his forehead and looks at him with wide panicked eyes. “We were just, um. See, Lisa showed up a little earlier than I thought?”

Barry slowly makes his way into the cortex, making sure to stay in Lisa’s line of sight so as not to startle her out of her concentration.

“So she saw everything instead of being slowly told,” Barry finishes for Cisco, and finally Lisa looks away from the board to look at him before turning fully once she sees his face.

“I know you,” she says with only a small amount of the flirty edge she used to have. Before. “You’re Cisco’s friend.”

Barry looks at Cisco for a few seconds before walking towards Lisa with his hand out.

“Barry Allen,” he says, and she takes his hand with a firm grip, leather gloves soft against his palm. “The Flash,” he continues.

Her grip tightens slightly, spasming in surprise before she dropped his hand.

She looks like she wants to haul up and punch him before her face smooths out, a sharp and calculating look in her eyes.

She looks so much like Snart for a second that Barry can’t help the curl of amusement in his chest.

“You’re nerdier than I thought you’d be,” she says as she takes a step back and Barry laughs.

“No I’m not,” he says and she smiles a little, nothing like it used to be.

“You’re right. You’re _exactly_ as nerdy as I thought you’d be.” Barry grins before stepping around her to get to the whiteboard. He gestures for her to sit and she perches on the console while Cisco falls harshly into his chair.

“Okay, so I know that all _this_ ,” he says, gesturing at the board, “looks like a lot and it doesn’t really look good, so I want to start at the beginning.”

He waits until she pulls her eyes away from the board and nods.

“Okay. So what do you know about how your brother died?” She swallows and tilts her head back a little, and Barry can physically see the walls coming up, as worn down as they are.

“Micky told me that he,” she pauses before shaking her hair out a little and tightening her resolve. “He saved Mick’s life and got himself killed. That’s all I could get out of him.”

She tilts her head down and pulls off her biker gloves and puts them down on the console next to her, her long hair briefly hiding her face.

Barry looks at Cisco who is now nervously sucking on a lollipop but he nods at Barry to continue. Lisa crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow.

“What do you know about time travel?”

 

By the time he’s finished explaining and Cisco has shown her the still images, she’s delicately pinching the bridge of her nose. He twists his hands together nervously as she doesn’t move for a stretch of time.

“I’m gonna kill him,” she says softly, almost to herself. She looks up and gives Barry a hard stare. “I’m going to fucking murder him,” she says with such conviction that if he didn’t know her, he’d think she’d actually do it.

She still might.

“You can murder him after we figure out how to get him back,” Cisco says before patting her shoulder comfortingly, only to snatch his hand away like it’s on fire when she looks at him. Cisco looks more and more panicked as she continues to stare at him, face a perfect and well practiced blank mask.

Then, something happens with her eyebrows. They scrunch slightly and she purses her lips and he’s never seen Snart look like that but he’s sure she got that from his as well.

“You really think you can get him back?” Her voice is soft and she sounds hesitant. She sounds young, a little sister who can stop grieving for her older brother, and Barry is reminded just how young Lisa really is. Not all that much older than him.

“I’m not going to promise that I can save him,” he says, as earnestly as he can. “But I will promise that I will do _everything_ I can to try.”

She locks eyes with him and he doesn’t look away, lets her search his face. After a few long moments, she relaxes. It’s almost imperceptible, but something in her face changes. Which is probably as relaxed as a Snart gets.

“I’d have less faith in you if you did promise to save him,” she says, the corner of her mouth curling up and he sees Cisco lean back in his chair, the panic he’s been showing since Barry arrived finally leaving.

She looks between them, a sardonic eyebrow raised.

“So, boys. What’s the plan?” Cisco jumps up out of his chair and stands so both Barry and Lisa are in front of him.

“Okay, so! That’s where you come in, my very lovely lady.” She rolls her eyes but Barry can see that that small smile doesn’t leave. “With Barry, I can open a portal into the Speed Force.”

Lisa squints a little and shakes her head.

“Okay? So what’s the problem?” Cisco looks at Barry, opening and closing his hands in thought, clearly trying to figure out a way to phrase it.

“The Speed Force is very big,” Barry says, jumping in. “It’s endless, actually. It’s a pocket dimension where people like me, Speedsters, get our speed from.” Lisa’s eyebrows raised and she sits up a little straighter.

“So you weren’t an accident, like all the other meta’s?” Barry swallows and looks down at his hands briefly before looking at her.

“I would have become the Flash in 2020 because of a fully _functioning_ particle accelerator built by the _actual_ Harrison Wells and Tess Morgan. But the man who killed my mom couldn’t wait that long. He killed a lot of people with the explosion of the particle accelerator, forcing my connection to the Speed Force years earlier.”

She’s staring him, her mouth hanging slightly open.

“The Speed Force has existed since the beginning of time and will continue until the end of it. So, no. I wasn’t an accident.”

Lisa’s eyebrows are slightly pinched as she looks at him before she seems to shake off whatever shock she’s feeling.

Cisco clears his throat, drawing both their attention.

“The Speed Force is very big. And, _very_ uncooperative. It will manifest different places and people you know, but it absolutely will not give you a straight answer. It will not tell us where your brother is.”

Lisa stands up and crosses her arms.

“Then how the _hell_ are we going to find Lenny?” Cisco and Barry look at each other before they both start to grin. Barry quickly flashes to where he knows Cisco keeps his gear and brings it back, handing it to him.

“With this,” Cisco says as he puts on his glasses and gloves. “These help amplify my powers, so I can open portals and vibe easier.”

She stares at him and the corner of her mouth twitches before her lips purse. Her eyes crinkle and it’s the most amused he’s ever seen her.

“You look like La Forge,” she says as she struggles to keep from smiling. Cisco stares at her and his mouth opens and closes a few times.

“That’s _Lieutenant Commander_ La Forge, to you,” Cisco says in faux offense as he pushes his shoulders back and puts on a blank expression.

Lisa laughs. Her head tilts back slightly and her hair falls behind her shoulders and it makes him smile in response.

When he looks at Cisco, Barry’s sure he can see the exact moment he falls in love with her.

Barry rolls his eyes at them and moves to push the whiteboard against the wall and out of the way.

“As Cisco was saying.” Cisco jumps slightly and looks guiltily away from Lisa. “Cisco will be able to get us into the Speed Force. But he needs a focus in order to find Snart.” Lisa tilts her head a little in confusion.

“A focus? So, what, like his ring or something?” Barry shrugs a little.

“Yeah, could be. Except that we have something better.” He locks eyes with her and she just stares at him expectantly for a good ten seconds. Then her eyes widened and she quickly looks to Cisco.

“Me? I’m the focus?” Cisco smiles at her reassuringly and opens his arms wide.

“Congratulations, Lisa. You’re going to help bring your brother back to life.”

“He was never _dead_ ,” Barry mumbles and they both elect to ignore him.

For the first time since Barry walked into the cortex to find Lisa standing there, she actually starts to look like herself. He didn’t notice how slumped her shoulders were until she strides quickly to grab Cisco’s hand, openly excited.

“What are we waiting for, nerds?


End file.
